You might have heard that Colin Craig has been umming and ahhing about whether he’ll launch yet another defamation case, this time against his former press secretary Rachel MacGregor.

Yesterday he was keen and today he’s pulled back a bit but won’t rule it out. It depends, he reckons, on whether he wins the current case he’s fighting against blogger Cameron Slater.

He’s already filed the papers, he just hasn’t bothered to tell anyone, and he did it back in November last year.

This is probably a load of bluster and I suspect Craig has seen the outpouring of public disgust in the past 24 hours since he first revealed he’d lodged papers for a case against Rachel in the High Court.

He’s also probably realised this isn’t going to help his reputation. In fact, if he has any left, in my view he’s put it firmly in the toilet now.

And that’s what it’s all about for Craig isn’t it. Reputation. You could argue – pretty successfully I reckon – that he’s the one who’s done the best possible job of ruining his reputation.

But he has the money to just keep going – the kind of money someone like Rachel couldn’t hope to raise in her defence. Let’s remember Craig’s alleged to have withheld salary payments from her so you could argue that he’s well versed in using his wealth to control the people around him.

And Rachel has had to testify, over and over and over in each of the defamation cases which have already taken place.

It is time for Colin Craig to step back and leave her alone. He cannot, even with another defamation case, stitch back together the regard of the New Zealand populace.

I believe it is tantamount to continued harassment using the courts and proceedings to continue to vex people who tell the truth about him.

We see him for what he is – a vainglorious man, with no real aptitude for politics and given to political gaffes, who had a romantic notion about a colleague and has been mortified to find that it wasn’t returned.

What he thought was a romance turned out to be the result of the kind of power imbalance that a lot of women have to negotiate in the course of their work, and which some bosses seek to exploit.

I agree.

Those are the facts of working life for many women. It’s happened to me… To keep your job, the source of your income, the means of paying your rent, you jolly along with people you don’t necessarily respect, and you don’t complain sometimes about things you know you should complain about. Because what happens then? You’re out on your ear.

But I have a warning for Colin Craig. If he changes his mind yet again and does decide to sue Rachel MacGregor, she will not be at the kind of disadvantage she’s been at in the past.

He will not be able to push his rich man’s advantage against a woman without the means to defend herself. We have crowdfunding these days, and Colin Craig will see the women – and men – of NZ rise up to make sure Rachel has the money to match him head to head in court.

I’ll make it my personal mission to make sure she does.

Defamation defences are horrendously expensive. I’ve been lucky, I have a great audience who assisted me with money and support. It was satisfying to see many readers turn up to court as support.

Rachel MacGregor is a victim here, and it is my belief that Colin Craig continues to victimise her.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.